The use of digital content is now prevalent in computing devices such as computers, smartphones, laptops computers, tablet computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, portable media players, etc. Digital content includes digital music, digital images, and digital videos. The digital content may be streaming content or locally stored content. Streaming content is content which is not stored locally on a computing device in advance, but rather, is received by and presented to the user while being received from another computing device (e.g., a content server). Locally stored content is content which is stored in a local memory (e.g., a hard disk) of the computing device.
When a user views digital content, a variety of information related to the digital content may be displayed to the user. For example, biographical information about the author or originator of a digital video may be displayed to the user, videos which are related to the currently playing video (e.g., similar videos or videos from the same author) may be displayed to the user, comments about the video may be displayed to the user, a synopsis of the video may be displayed to a user, other authors or originators of related content may be displayed to a user, topics which are related to the subject, theme or topic of the video (e.g., related topics) may be displayed to a user, etc. The information related to the digital content may be referred to as the “context” of the digital content. The context may be displayed to the user in one portion of the UI, while the video plays in another portion of the UI. The context may be displayed using a variety of menus, tabs, lists, grids, scroll bars, and/or other user interface elements.
A user may select a context item (e.g., an item or a piece of information) from the context. For example, the user may view a list of related authors or originators of videos, and may select one of the related authors (e.g., another context item). When the user selects a related author, the user leaves the current context (e.g., the context of the current playing video) and a new context (e.g., information related with the selected, related author) is displayed to the user. Many mobile computing devices (e.g., cell phones, smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), or tablet devices) may have smaller screen space (e.g., smaller screens) than desktop computing devices. Because of the smaller screen space, displaying context information for digital content and/or selected context items may be more cumbersome. Generally, playback of the current video is interrupted in order to display the new context to the user. For example, if a video is currently playing and the user selects a related context item (e.g., a related artist) from the current context, a new context associated with the related context item is displayed to the user and the currently playing video is stopped in order to display the new context to the user. Because of the transition from one context to another context (e.g., the context of a currently playing video to the context of a related context item), the user may be unable to continue viewing the video while browsing new context associated with a context item from a previous context.